Stratasys sues Afinia

QuoteMattMoses
[*] A self replicating 3D printer will never be made.
[*] Unless it's made by an art student who thinks it would be funny.
[/list]

Haha, that's fun!

That makes me thing, then why we are here? then why Reprap exists?

Eventually one will be made. Not by one person, or a team, but by the whole community in small steps. Someone will improve previous work and then perhaps will start a company, but then some other guy will continue where the first guy left and so on, until one day, the machine is replicable. Perhaps, as humans, we are too selfish to make one by ourselves alone, but those little steps (many times motivated by the potencial of money making) can lead to the true REPRAP.

That is no longer true, since first to file came in. The key thing about prior art is that it must be "known within the trade", they won't be googling for open source on the web.

I'm afraid that a lot of people have ideas about the patent system which are quite unlike how it is actually applied, which perhaps leads them to think the patent system is fair, in practice it is heavily skewed to a land grab by large corporates. Patent offices get paid by patent fees, they have little interest in refusing patents however obvious. If there is a dispute, they let the corporate lawyers fight it out, they don't care who wins.

Bob your comments on the issue are incorrect and misleading. First to file doesn't trump prior art. first to file is invoked when two persons try to patent the same idea. The first one that files gets precedence over the patent not necessarily who thought of it or used it first. Prior art still exists and can be (and is) used as a defense in an infringement suit.

The DMCA has nothing to do with a patent infringement cases. Period. A cease and desist has no binding legal authority. In many cases no cease and desist letters are sent prior to litigation. You are also assuming what a host would or wouldn't do. Your posts are how threads like this create hysteria and misinformation. Rather than spreading FUD I think a more prudent approach is to wait and see what will happen. These types of issues are complex and can take several years to resolve.

Beta lost to VHS primarily due to the much longer recording length available on VHS - the lower price was nice, but being able to pack more shows onto a tape is what really tipped the scales in the market.

How many of us were around during the video format wars?..... It was a combination of cost, length of play, availability and the fact that porn was driving the content segment of the industry were why VHS became the dominant format. There was hardly any content available for quite a while (compared to now) so it was up to you to record what you wanted to watch. Movies on tape didn't come until later. At the time the motion picture industry was fighting VCR technology tooth and nail with the initial consumer apps being home movies, taping TV and porn.

QuoteChristopher Barnatt on November 27th, 2013 at 12:28 pm said:
Excellent article. It is interesting how Stratasys are now trying to “defend” their intellectual property in terms of 3D printing hardware, while on the Makerbot.com website — in the FAQ for their Digitizer 3D scanner ( [s3.amazonaws.com] ) — they very much side-step intellectual property issues with a throw-away comment: To cite the FAQ:

===
[Q] What about intellectual property and copyrights? Does scanning something violate those?

[A] The MakerBot Digitizer is a new technology in a new frontier. If you’re interested in reading more about how copyright and other IP topics, check out writings from the public interest group Public Knowledge.
===

The MakerBot Digitizer is apparently all about “sharing” — scanning everything in the world and uploading the scans for everybody to have free access to on Thingiverse.com (which MakerBot set up and which Stratasys hence now own). Quite how this kind of pioneering attitude to intellectual property can square with a legal move that can sadly only slow the development of 3D printing is — to me at least — very unclear. Revolutions need enthusiasts as well as corporate pioneers, and Stratasys may actually find that their strategy here backfires if the grass roots community starts to boycott MakerBots and/or Thingiverse.

Afinia is selling closed source, fully built printers. Honestly, it's a pretty far cry from what the average reprap user is using. I don't think there's any reason for all the panic here.

I agree here, reprap means open source.
Most of the community members will not be affected, it seems that the patent owners, 3D Systems, Stratasys only intervene if companies come up with closed source 'direct manufacturing' developments.

3D Systems-> FormLabs
Stratasys-> Afinia

I don't get the 'hysteria' in the community: A closed source company is going after a closed source company

Sure, they have gone for closed source this time, but who is saying they are only after closed source sellers? That has nothing to do with their decision. If you start selling 3D printers and they notice you're becoming a strong competitor, they will take action, no matter open or closed source. They don't care.

yeah i think ur right, stratasys is just acting as top dog. knocking down younger dogs that are getting big enough to challenge for market dominance. reprap is safe for now, until its machines get way more advanced and effective than makerbot which is bound to happen i think because the community can move onto new ideas quicker without having to worry about shifting a backlog of mass-manufactured stock. cant wait for makerbot3.

What is claimed is:
1. A method of making a three-dimensional article by the deposition of solidifiable material onto a receiving surface,
with the article having a predetermined porosity comprising that fractional portion of the article that is devoid of such material, comprising the steps of:Work around: Use a random number generator to select porosity. Taken further you could do this to each slice.

adjusting the rate of dispensing of the material to provide a predetermined porosity in the article thus formed.Work around: Use a fixed rate of dispensing of the material.

the easiest way around the infill patent problem is to simply remove the option and make the model solid by default, then make it the responsibility of the modeler to incorporate in the model an internal structure which mimics an infill density, and that can be achieved with even a simple open-scad script... the person writing slicing software can then be free of potential litigation and the companies selling 3d printers no longer breech the patent... at least in that respect

QuoteFim Fischer
[[quote=Guizmo]
If you start selling 3D printers and they notice you're becoming a strong competitor, they will take action, no matter open or closed source. They don't care.
Well, i don't know if they would or if they care.
But i am relaxed anyway, i am 'selling' diy- education, i don't intend to sell '3D printers'.

According to the patents mentioned, they could sue hotend producers and heated bed manufacturers, as well as slicing software.
If they continue this path, they surely can seriously hurt the reprap community. True, the software will still be available somehow, but active development may discontinue if the developer could be sued for patent infringement.

We should keep in mind that the UP! is neither new nor really different from most Repraps.

From what I understand, the main problem cannot be solved by a workaround. The patent they used against the heated bed is so broad that they could even sue you if you heat the room in which the printer is located - a patent that broad should have never been granted, IMHO. The patent about the infill isn't really an invention as well, since you are bound to have empty spaces when you're doing an FDM print. It happens automatically when you don't push enough material through your nozzle, it's not an "invention", again IMHO.

The main problem is, when Stratasys sues you, you will have to defend yourself in court if you want to resist. This means you have to invest a lot of time and money. Even if you use a workaround, Statasys can still sue you. And even if you use workarounds, there is no guarantee that you win.

Disclaimer: This post does not constitute legal advice. I am not an attorney. I do not have expertise in these matters.

As to any of the work arounds being effective you would have to consult your attorney.
I'm not an expert, I'm still struggling to learn the basics of 3D printers, and printing.

My understanding is that you have to have a work around for every independent, and dependent claim.
So by utilizing only one work around you are still infringing upon Stratasys I.P.

If I wasn't told that patent 5,866,058 was a heated bed, I wouldn't have know it from reading the patent,
the description in the claims are too vague, broad, and confusing for me to interpret.

As to the infill, Mr. Lane made an interesting observation of how pottery objects utilize infill to reduce the mass,
is this prior art?, if it is it's an ancient technique. Clay is a plastic, it's commonly extruded,
it goes through a glass transition upon hardening, and can require hollow infill.

QuoteRyan Lane on November 28th, 2013 at 4:08 pm said:
Maybe I’m wrong here, but I swear I learned in a pottery class ages ago that instead of a solid block of clay it was better to lay a grid of materials with holes for the air to expand so that firing was easier. Is that a common technique? If so that would would be prior art on infill. On top of that I’m pretty sure that people working with glass have understood that you need to keep it hot. It doesn’t seem like you should be able to patent common sense. And hidden seam? I mean really. This has been part of knitting, basket weaving, to any number of other long standing traditional art forms. It isn’t special just because it’s plastic.

In terms of a thriving community driven technology like 3d printing they should be a bit more careful about how general these patents are. its like patenting the genome. BAD for humankind. thats my f-ing genome. I have the god given right to build 3d printers